Inside the walls of Carcassonne, there’s no view of the modern world; you are immersed in a self-contained medieval universe (though with modern marketing). The streets are cobbled, the buildings built of blocks of stone. Since La Cité sits on a hilltop, from the streets the only view of the world beyond the walls is of the sky.
The medieval city still has about 200 residents, but almost every business establishment within the walls is geared to tourists. There’s the usual variety of tourist clutter: plastic armor and swords for the kiddies, Carcassonne crockery and tea towels for the grown-ups. Come at midday and every view will be blocked with tourists and the dreck set out to entice them. Visit before 10am or after 3pm, and you can easily imagine yourself back into the Middle Ages.
In its golden age, the 1100s, Carcassonne was a wealthy, sophisticated city. The educated, open-minded rulers of Carcassonne welcomed all manner of unusual folk: Jews, Muslims, the radical Christians called Cathars. Raimond-Roger Trencavel, last of that dynasty to rule Carcassonne, was a connoisseur of music and poetry, inviting the finest troubadours to perform in his court – not only the well-born singers who were welcome in all the courts of Europe, but also talented bards of the scruffier variety. These artists performed for a literate, mannered nobility and a wealthy merchant class. Clothing fashions were elaborate for both men and women: a visitor from the north scoffed at the men’s clean-shaven faces, their parted hair, their "locks grown long like women," and their clothing "whose colors suit each man’s mood." By medieval standards, it was a pretty colorful and bohemian place – a bit like San Francisco in the 1960s, but without the protest signs.
These cultured people constructed some marvelous buildings. My favorite is the barrel-vaulted restaurant on the same square as Basilique St. Nazaire and Hotel de la Cité at the southwest corner of town. See what interesting corners you can find; there is plenty of evidence remaining of the refinement of that earlier age.
In 1209, crusaders were sent to eradicate the heretic Cathar sect, and because the Trencavels sheltered Cathars, Carcassonne became a target. The city fell when the wells ran dry during a particularly hot summer, or, according to another account, when Raimond-Roger Trencavel was tricked out of the city with a false offer to parley. The old town began to wither in 1248, when the King of France took possession of the fortified city for the last time after a series of skirmishes with dispossessed Trencavel heirs and rebellious local citizens. The people of Carcassonne were ejected from the fortified city and given the area beneath the city walls to settle. Over the centuries, the walls fell into disrepair and were used as a quarry, but the old town remained essentially intact. The mid-19th century restoration of the walls and city has given us a Carcassonne once again insular, formidable, and elegant.